A positive report on consumer spending helped push stocks mostly higher Friday for the first time in three days.

The gains were modest as investors continued to cut their holdings in biotechnology stocks, some of the best-performing names of 2013. Instead, the stocks that advanced the most were mostly mature, large companies like Microsoft, Exxon Mobil and Cisco Systems.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 58.83 points, or 0.4 percent, to 16,323.06. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index rose 8.58 points, or 0.5 percent, to 1,857.62. The Nasdaq composite, which includes a number of large biotech companies, rose just 4.53 points, or 0.1 percent, to 4,155.76.

The biggest gainer in the Dow was Microsoft, which rose 94 cents, or 2.4 percent, to $40.30. The company announced on Thursday that it was bringing Microsoft Office to the iPad and would shift its focus away from Windows. Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s new chief executive, made the announcement in his first public appearance as the leader of Microsoft.

In a report Thursday, analysts at Credit Suisse said they viewed Office on the iPad as “a massive revenue and operating profit opportunity for Microsoft.” Microsoft helped lift other large technology companies, with Cisco Systems, Intel and Oracle rising roughly 1 percent or more.

In contrast to technology, biotechnology had another horrible day. Gilead Sciences, Biogen Idec and Vertex Pharmaceuticals were all down 4 percent or more. Biotechnology stocks were among the hottest sectors in the stock market for the last two years, but the S.&P. 500 biotechnology index is down 12 percent this month alone, erasing all of the sector’s gains in January and February.

“The high-momentum names have lost all the traction they had in the past year,” said John D. Fox, director of research at Fenimore Asset Management.

Investors were encouraged by news that Americans increased their spending last month, a hopeful sign for an economy that has been slowed by months of severe winter weather. The Commerce Department said consumer spending inched up 0.3 percent, a hair short of economists’ forecasts. Incomes rose at the same pace.

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A second report on Friday showed that the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index dipped to 80 in March from 81.6 in February. The index was little changed from earlier in the month.

“The economy is now reaching the point where it can shake off the weather-related excuses,” Doug Coté, a market strategist for ING Investment Management, wrote in an email.

Investors will now turn their attention to next week’s economic data, including the March jobs report expected on Friday. Economists forecast that the economy, thawing from the harsh winter, created 200,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate remained steady at 6.6 percent.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose around 2.72 percent, up from 2.68 percent Thursday. The price dropped 11/32 to 100 8/32.

In other company news, King Digital, the maker of the Candy Crush Saga video game, was down for a third day in a row after its initial public offering on Wednesday. The stock fell 41 cents, or 2.2 percent, to $18.08.

CBS Outdoor, a major outdoor advertising company, rose $1.50, or 5 percent, to $29.50 on its first day of trading. CBS decided to spin off CBS Outdoor into a separate publicly traded company.

The electric carmaker Tesla Motors rose $5.05, or 2.4 percent, to $212.37, after news that federal safety regulators had closed their investigation into allegations of battery fires without any penalty against Tesla.

A version of this article appears in print on March 29, 2014, on Page B7 of the New York edition with the headline: Shares Rise Modestly, Ending Drought. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe